


To Be Alone (With You)

by ObscureReference



Series: Curses and Blessings [3]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Ghosts, but it's not shown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 16:58:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5833387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObscureReference/pseuds/ObscureReference
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mandy and Jenny were, like, totally inseparable. </p>
<p>Jenny liked that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be Alone (With You)

**Author's Note:**

> Based off a conversation I had with tumblr user who asked what the "Other" status meant on the medical chart from my other fic, "Memento Mori." You might want to read that first to get a feel for the universe, but this could probably stand on it's own. Just know Curses and Blessings are things sometimes placed on children and are considered good and bad, respectively. This is "Other."
> 
> I listed this as gen but if you think it's a little more romantic sometimes, you're also not wrong. (Though for those of you concerned, it stays pretty much gen the whole time.)

Mandy and Jenny were, like, totally inseparable.

Jenny liked that.

She liked the story of their birth, two babies born within the same hour. She liked hearing how the nurse had found them somehow curled up in the same crib, faces pressed cheek to cheek, stubby fingers curled over the fuzzy birthmarks on each other's wrist. Newborns were supposed to be kept in separate cribs, and even after questioning, everyone in the pediatrics ward swore up and down that they had been separated after all. They had been placed in cribs across the room from each other, even. The name tags on the side of the cribs, one doubly full and one suspiciously empty, vouched for the truth as well.

Mandy always said it was magic that had placed her in Jenny's crib. She said the universe just knew they were supposed to be together. Jenny agreed.

And so they were always together. They held hands on the playground in kindergarten, they gossiped behind the stairs in middle school, they aced everything high school threw at them, and when it came time for college, they had already agreed where they would go long before anyone else even asked. They would go to Samwell together or not at all.

It hadn't been Jenny's idea to join Theta Alpha Theta. It had been the vibrant colors of the sorority's booth at the club fair, the perfect lipstick and the super cute earrings that had caught Mandy's attention.

She had spotted the group across the field and without skipping a beat, she grabbed Jenny's hand like always, darting across the grass, and Jenny followed. Like always.

The girls of Theta Alpha Theta were stylish and their volunteer work was sweet and living in a sorority house instead of a dorm was fun, and then Rush Night was. Not any of those.

Jenny looked down to where her feet were supposed to be touching the floor. They weren't.

She looked to her right. Mandy was floating upside down a few feet above Jenny's head. Her long blonde hair fell just long enough to tickle Jenny's nose. Jenny took the hair band out of her hair and handed it to Mandy.

"Thanks," Mandy said.

Even upside down, she managed to put her hair in a high ponytail, the way Brad from seventh grade said was ugly right before Jenny spilled her drink on him and Mandy wore her hair like that every day for a month.

Jenny smiled.

Mandy was right about the universe. Even dead, they were still together.

\----------

"Are ghosts even, like, real?" Mandy asked when she managed to right herself, sitting crisscross in the open air. "I thought they were made-up or something."

Jenny looked at her fingers. They were just transparent enough that she could see through them to the wood floor below, but. "I feel pretty real."

"Oh!" Mandy said. "What's that?"

"What's what?"

Mandy floated close enough to tug at Jenny's sleeve, and Jenny let her. She liked the way Mandy's fingers, no longer infant stubby but now long and thin and soft, still curled over her wrist the same way they always had. Her fingers were warm on Jenny's skin, despite the fact they were floating two feet off the ground and kind of, like, super dead, obviously.

"Your birthmark," Mandy said, fingering the skin on Jenny's wrist. "It looks different."

It did look different. The birthmark on Jenny's wrist had always been fuzzy and indistinct, a brown splotch that almost seemed darker or lighter on different days, even though birthmarks weren't supposed to change color. If they did, that meant cancer or something. Mary-Lynn from chemistry once told her it looked like someone had thrown mud at her and she had only washed it off halfway. Jenny thought Mary-Lynn needed to get out more.

But her birthmark didn't look like that now. It wasn't round and splotchy anymore. Actually, it looked like—

Jenny gasped. "It's a butterfly!"

Mandy frowned. She made a humming sound.

"It looks kind of like a moth," she said regretfully.

"It totally doesn't," Jenny countered. "Moths are ugly, and butterflies are super cute. It's totally a butterfly."

"It had kind of a fat body though," Mandy said. She leaned close enough that her nose almost brushed Jenny's arm. "Are you sure? I thought moths had bigger bodies."

"It's not a moth," Jenny said firmly.

Mandy straightened, but she didn't let go of Jenny's wrist. Jenny didn't mind. Mandy scrunched up her nose in that cute way that Jenny said would give her wrinkles some day.

She guessed they probably didn't have to worry about wrinkles any more.

"How come your birthmark is a m—butterfly now?"

"What about yours?" Jenny asked.

She and Mandy had been born with matching birthmarks. Another reason they were meant to be together forever. She grabbed Mandy's hand and flipped it over, palm up. Another butterfly silhouette stared back at her.

At least they still matched. It meant the universe hadn't made a mistake.

"How come they changed?" Mandy asked. "Is it because we're dead?"

"I thought ghosts stayed the same when they died," Jenny said. Not that she'd ever seen a ghost before. But that was always how they were in movies and stuff. Except in _Ghostbusters_. Those had just been gross.

She thought the theory held true though. She was still wearing her oversized Samwell t-shirt and Mandy still had on her white tank and jean shorts. If their clothes didn't change, it didn't make sense that their skin would.

Jenny gasped as a thought occurred to her.

"Oh my gosh! What if we've been, like, Cursed?"

Mandy frowned. "Why do we have to be Cursed?"

"Uh, 'cause we're super dead?" Jenny said. "And we didn't go to the afterlife or anything either." It seemed obvious.

Mandy shrugged. "Yeah, but we're still _together_."

Jenny blinked. Mandy was right. She always focused on the facts. Jenny liked that about her. She would have made a great lawyer some day.

"We are, aren't we?" Jenny said. It felt like a line out of a cheesy movie, but mostly Jenny felt warm things in her belly. Mandy didn't say anything else, but she smiled and Jenny smiled back. "Come on. Let's go test our super ghost powers on the roof."

Mandy slid her hand down Jenny's wrist so they could interlace their fingers, but for once Jenny didn't keep hold when Mandy darted away. She stayed in the living room instead, watching Mandy head for the stairs.

"Wait!" Jenny called after her.

Mandy froze halfway up the stairs. The floorboards always creaked when Jenny had walked up them, but technically they didn't have to walk anymore. "What?"

"Can't we just, like, go through walls and stuff?" Jenny asked. She hadn't tried it yet, but she was pretty sure that was what ghosts were supposed to do.

Mandy blinked back at her, wide eyed. Then she stuck out her hand and watched it phase through the railing.

"You're so smart," Mandy said. And then she floated through the ceiling. Jenny was right behind her.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is http://someobscurereference.tumblr.com/  
> Feel free to hmu for whatever reason.


End file.
